The evening features a food tasting reception hosted by premier local culinary partners, a silent auction, and a program and award ceremony, followed by live music entertainment from “The Inspiration”. Proceeds benefit Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF), a nonprofit whose mission is to build healthy and safe communities by addressing the root causes and the consequences of family violence and violence against women. CPAF is committed to meeting the specific cultural and language needs of Asian Pacific Islander (API) women and their families. The event’s Leadership Sponsors include Anthony Caminiti, Cathay Bank, East West Bank and Nossaman LLP.

General Admission ticket prices begin at $150 (Early Bird rate through August 22, while supplies last). Reserved seating tickets are available at $500. To purchase tickets for this year’s event, visit the CPAF ticket page. A complete list of sponsors and culinary partners is on the gala event page.

The gala’s theme, “Together We Rise”, celebrates the integration this year of CPAF and Asian Pacific Women’s Center (APWC), a nonprofit dedicated to providing a safe haven and support services for women and children who are survivors of domestic violence. CPAF and APWC share the same vision of an Asian and Pacific Islander community that is free from violence and both organizations provide services that are sensitive to the cultural and language needs of Asian and Pacific Islander survivors of violence and their families.

For information on how to become a sponsor, contact CPAF’s development team at development@cpaf.info or (323) 653-4045, ext. 334.

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About Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF)

Founded in 1978, CPAF established the first multi-lingual and multi-cultural hotline, emergency shelter, and transitional housing in the United States to specialize in serving Asian and Pacific Islander (API) survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Today, CPAF responds to thousands of crisis calls on its 24-hour hotline in 30 API languages and shelters hundreds of survivors and children, in addition to providing community prevention programs. For more information about CPAF, visit www.NurturingChange.org or call 1-800-339-3940.

Domestic violence can be a difficult subject to talk about when you don’t know the audience very well. But what if I showed you a story of someone who looks like you or someone you love?

Visual storytelling can be a powerful way to break through some barriers that currently exist in many communities and in particular API communities when it comes to talking about domestic violence or sexual assault (DV/SA).

CPAF’s hope is to produce a collection of stories featuring survivors from various Asian and Pacific Islander (API) backgrounds. We plan to share these stories with the hope that the audience can identify with the survivor and develop a stronger personal conviction to help end DV/SA in their community. We also hope the videos will serve as empowering tools for other survivors, leading them to seek help or to share their personal journeys as well.

We are currently seeking API survivors to be featured for the upcoming Survivor Series episodes. Please contact us if you feel led to share your story with others in this way.

The Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF) helped launch a pilot training series to help strengthen cultural responsiveness practices across California. As an organization that has been dedicated to helping Asian and Pacific Islander survivors facing cultural and linguistic barriers, it was a fitting task for CPAF to partner with other agencies in a joint mission to eliminate all forms of violence.

Six organizations met in January 2017 to collaborate on an unprecedented model of learning. Since then, the group has been traveling across the state to bring together service providers in an effort to increase access to victim services. Thisproject, known as the MYLAR (Multi-Year Language Access Resources) Collaborative, is being led by My Sister’s House and Everyday Impact Consulting. Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV), Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF), Korean American Family Services (KFAM) and Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) round out the group.

This exercise is called Blanketed By Blame and is designed to help participants see the structures that can cause harm and how they can be different

The training location alternates each month from NorCal to SoCal to cities in between. Adopting a diversity framework, enhancing leadership/budget strategies, and increasing language access at each workplace are examples of what participants learn in reference to serving victims of crime more effectively throughout the state.

The MYLAR training includes many styles of learning. Session three is a panel discussion on budgeting and staffing for cultural responsiveness

The training is free and open to any organization or government/social service agency that iswilling to reflect on its current practices and be open to making necessary improvements to better serve its population. Post-training technical assistance can also be provided.

Every year, a group of highly qualified graduates of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand spend a year living and teaching in Los Angeles. These young men and women teach Thai language, traditional Thai Music and dance to children at the Wat Thai L.A Buddhist Temple. This is a year where the recent grads get a taste of a new culture during their yearlong residency in L.A. They have an opportunity to not only teach, but also improve their own English skills. CPAF’s partnership with Thai Community Development Center (Thai CDC) allowed us to enter the temple grounds to provide an educational workshop for the teachers about CPAF services.

Teachers from Wat Thai L.A. Learn about CPAF

Thai CDC’s Social Service Coordinator Wanda Pathomrit engaged her audience with an introduction to CPAF in Thai and translated our greetings. We covered a lot of topics including identifying sexual assault situations that could occur at the Thai school temple program. We talked about differences in American and Thai cultures as well as family dynamics and pressures. We want to empower the teachers to be advocates for their students and the families they work with at Wat Thai.

At the end of our meeting, the students invited Wanda back to talk more in-depth about CPAF’s missions and services. We are excited about making new friendships and relationships with the Thai community through this unique opportunity.

January is Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention Month. Human trafficking is considered to be the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. It is estimated to be a $150 billion industry, according to the International Labor Organization (2014). Almost 800,000 victims are trafficked through international borders annually, and Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) make up the largest group of people trafficked into the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Los Angeles is a top point-of-entry location due to its diverse communities, proximity to international borders and ports, as well as its significant immigrant population. CPAF has dealt primarily with international trafficking situations and has seen culturally sensitive trends while assisting survivors of human trafficking. Here are some facts we gathered while helping our survivors:

1. Lack of knowledge: Many human trafficking victims don’t know that they are victims. Manipulation, intimidation and fear often layer their situations, confusing them. Education about trafficking helps them to gain insight into what has happened in their lives.2. Fear: International trafficking victims often fear deportation and experience a lack of safety. Trafficking perpetrators can harm the victims’ and their families anywhere, including in their home countries.3. Love: Intimate partners can force and/or groom an individual into trafficking, blurring lines to include domestic violence/sexual assault.4. Shame: Trafficked individuals may feel trapped and uncertain of how to pay off their debt to their traffickers. This can create a sense of isolation and an immense feeling of guilt for being in such a position. These circumstances can become barriers in reaching out to their family/friends or asking for help.5. Control: Traffickers work in trafficking “rings/gangs” to tighten their control and power over those they traffic. This creates a real sense of danger and forces a trafficking survivor to perform any task given all for the sake of staying alive.

During the month of January, our media partner LA 18 featured CPAF to talk about human trafficking. Links to the interviews will be added as they are provided.

LA 18’s Juliette Zhuo featured CPAF Volunteer Kat Sea on her show to talk about human trafficking

Can you help us transform our new Community Center into a warm and welcoming atmosphere?

We are in need of matching furniture, signage, and paintings or other artwork, especially in the common areas that first greet our survivors and visitors.

This is a safe space for some of our survivors to come in for counseling and healing workshops. It is also a place where our advocates take hotline calls and our staff prepare ways to better serve our communities in Southern California and beyond.

We could use volunteers with an artistic background to help us settle into our new home. We would also appreciate corporate donors who may have donations that fit our needs.

Please email volunteer@cpaf.info if you have any ideas on beautifying our new space, or if you have items you’re interested in donating.

“You Matter.” Those two words changed Elaine Mayumi Whitefeather’s life when she thought she hit rock bottom.

Elaine’s first memories of surviving childhood abuse, racial violence and sexual assault traced her back to when she was only three years old. Her perpetrators included her own father, people from a religious institution and strangers. She grew up during the height of racism when being of mixed races (Black, Native American, and Japanese) meant not being treated as an equal in America. Elaine noted that she was 10% white, but no one addressed this fact and treated her as a third-class citizen. She was told that God didn’t listen to her prayers, so she learned to rely solely on herself every time she faced any abuse or discrimination.

Elaine recalled a day when she was molested, raped and severely injured by multiple men. When she eventually stumbled home with two broken feet, her mom told her to not let her father see her in such a disgraceful state. “I learned to put makeup on that day,” she said. “I never learned to put on makeup to look pretty. I wore makeup to cover up my bruises.” There was no one to comfort Elaine or to simple tell her that what was happening was wrong.

Elaine Mayumi Whitefeather shares her story in Berkeley, CA

When Elaine was 20-years-old, she had 33 arrests and a couple of failed suicide attempts. “I was afraid of living,” said Elaine. “Death meant the end of it all. No more fear. Death was peace to me.” However appealing the idea may have been, suicide was not an option for her on the day she decided to drown herself in a river.

Elaine said she felt someone touch her shoulders as she was walking into the riverbed. She turned around and saw a white man with tears in his eyes. He told her the two words that planted a seed in her heart. “You matter.” It was then that she realized that she had to value herself in order to save herself.

The man she met that day happened to be a visiting professor. He called a professor from her university and told him that there was a girl with a broken heart and a wounded spirit that they need to support. He built a bridge for her to get out of the darkness. It was from there that her healing journey began.

Decades later, Elaine Mayumi Whitefeather has worked tirelessly in human service work, dedicating a majority of her time in the field of domestic violence. Elaine received a standing ovation after her speech at the Communities Empowered for Systems Change, A Peer-Led Institute presented by the Culturally Responsive Domestic Violence Network.

CPAF took part in this two-day gathering in Berkeley, CA made possible by the Blue Shield of California Foundation. CPAF and other agencies exchanged their experiences and ideas in working with marginalized communities. The foundation launched the Culturally Responsive Domestic Violence Network in 2012 to support underserved communities that are often overlooked.

Stories like Elaine’s resonated with a majority of those in the audience, as we were reminded that roughly 80% of the attendees were domestic violence survivors themselves. “Social justice always starts by those who were affected,” Elaine said. “Domestic violence isn’t something you get over. Your power is in your pain. Your pain will lead you to your greatest purpose if you follow it all the way through.”

Elaine’s life exemplifies how a person can transform his/her negative experiences into opportunities of empowerment. We at CPAF came out of the meeting re-energized and re-focused. We are here to continue our work to encourage and build bridges in support of our API families. Our goal is to have more survivors like Elaine share their stories and help end domestic violence in their communities.